Lestrades_Game

  I have spent much of the past month painting 15mm Carthaginians and their allies. The army is initially for playing Le Art De La Guerre, the latest hydra head from the DBM rules heritage. Further down the line I intend to use them for historical scenario pickup games, possibly using the Age of Hannibal or Hail Caesar rule sets.     My forces are made of a mixture of miniatures. The bulk are from the Plastic Soldier Company (PSC) Mortem Et Gloriam ‘Pacto’ range. It would appear that PSC picked up older moulds from both Xyston and a range called Corvus Belli. They then retooled them to take a form of plastic they refer to as ‘Ultra Cast’ and spin out these box sets mostly to support their published rule set.   I went for them as they had fairly good reviews and were cheaper than the alternatives. Most companies in this area charge around £4.50-5 per pack, with a pack being 8 infantry or 3-4 cavalry. A couple of companies charge £15-16 for 24-30 infantry figur...

 A first for this blog, some miniatures review! Over the past two months I have gotten into miniatures. Prior to this I had stuck to board wargames largely for cost and transport reasons (I have moved house often and did not want to haul minis around). However I do have a strong game designer urge within me. I am always writing RPG material, most of which is never used. So moving over to minis will allow me some space to exercise my creative side in researching and writing scenarios. I want to do skirmishes in the French Indian War of the 1750s. This conflict only had one really sizable pitched battle with most of the action being skirmishes of a few tens to a few thousand men in the forests and river valleys of Canada and the then Colonies. I will be using the Sharp Practice rules at least initially.  I read around and then spent ~£70 on minis from Matchlock. Matchlock are 15mm metal minis sold by Cavalier books, who also sell the minifigs range. The Matchlocks had good revie...